What was the projected casualty numbers for Operation Olympic? Something like 2.5 MILLION GIs? Not to mention the Japanese fatalities, and the fanatic civilian home guard.
If the militarists in Japan had the bomb instead, do you think that years later they’d be beating themselves up over nuking the U.S.? I doubt it.
500,000 Purple Hearts were manufactured in anticipation of the invasion of Japan. These Purple Hearts were used in Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I, Afghanistan, Iraq and countless other conflicts -- we still have over 100,000 left.
We should remember that even after the first bomb, many Japs still wanted to fight on and there were a large amou.t of troops still in China